Thomas Fleming

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• 7-29-17
  

  Thomas Fleming’s Encounters with History

  by Yanek Mieczkowski

  While Fleming is now gone, his books remain, and their special value is the fresh insights they offer.

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• SOURCE: NYT
  7-27-17
  

  NYT memorializes Thomas Fleming, historian of the Revolution

  Mr. Fleming sometimes departed from the Revolutionary era, taking on the Civil War, both world wars and the histories of West Point and New Jersey. But he would always return to the period that most fascinated him.

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• SOURCE: Press Release
  4-14-16
  

  Thomas Fleming Wins Coveted Writer’s Award

  The New York American Revolution Round Table named Fleming’s "The Great Divide, The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Still Divides America" the best book of 2015.

• SOURCE: The Weekly Standard
  7-22-13
  

  Winston Groom: Review of Thomas Fleming's "A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War" (Da Capo, 2013)

  Winston Groom is the author of Forrest Gump and, most recently, Shiloh, 1862. His forthcoming book, The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight, will be published in November.It is no news that the age of political correctness and revisionist history is upon us, and nowhere is it more apparent than in the subject of slavery and the American Civil War. In the past half-dozen years, literature has appeared condemning the Southern general Robert E. Lee as a traitor, slaver, and racist. In Memphis, the city council has voted to remove the names of Confederate leaders from its city parks, and similar efforts calling for the removal of statues and other symbols commemorating the old Confederacy are in progress across the South.

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• What If Robert E. Lee Accepted Command of the Union Army?

  by Thomas Fleming

  Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.The United States of America trembled on the brink of her greatest tragedy -- a civil war that would kill a million young men. Seven Southern states had seceded after Abraham Lincoln was elected president as an anti-slavery Republican, with scarcely a single Southern vote. They had been unmoved by his inaugural address, in which he warned them that he had taken a solemn oath to preserve the Union -- and reminded them of their shared heritage, witnessed by the numberless patriot graves in every state.

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• A New Way to Look at America's Wars

  by Thomas Fleming

  Via Tumblr.From my early days as an historian, I have always looked for insights that explain the past on a deeper level than a series of merely exciting or disturbing events. I still vividly remember my first experience. I was working on a book about the year 1776 and had file drawers crammed with research. But I felt the need for something fundamental, a pattern of thought that drew the narrative together in a new, more meaningful way.Suddenly the words swarmed into my mind: 1776: Year of Illusions. It was my first encounter with what I now call a disease in the public mind.

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• 6-3-13
  

  The Real Uncle Tom and the Unknown South He Helped Create

  by Thomas Fleming

  Today's readers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin have no idea that there was a real Uncle Tom.

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• Another Thomas Jefferson Tried to Eliminate Slavery in Virginia

  by Thomas Fleming

  This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming’s new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. Part two of a three-part series (read parts one and two). Thomas Jefferson Randolph. Credit: Monticello.

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• Thomas Jefferson's Nightmare

  by Thomas Fleming

  Incendie de la Plaine du Cap. - Massacre des Blancs par les Noirs, 1833.This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming’s new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. Part two of a three-part series (read part one here).

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• George Washington: The Forgotten Emancipator

  by Thomas Fleming

  George Washington at Yorktown, by Auguste Couder. P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming’s new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War.

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• Channelling George Washington: The Worthless Continental

  by Thomas Fleming

  A 1779 fifty-five dollar note printed by the Continental Congress. Via Wiki Commons."Welcome to the Continental Congress.""I'm not sure what you mean by that, Mr. President.""I mean we're on our way to a visit to the people who almost lost the American Revolution -- if we continue to try to maintain the illusion that our money has any value when the interest rate for borrowing it is zero and we try to solve our mounting debt problems by printing it by the billions.""Was that what happened to the Continental Congress?""Congress printed dollars at a fantastic rate in 1776. It seemed to work beautifully. They shipped it to the various states and they built forts, warships and mustered new regiments for the Continental Army. We were a dynamic new nation -- until we lost a couple of battles. Suddenly people started thinking that if we lost the war, these pieces of paper would be worth nothing. NOTHING. That's when our dollars started to depreciate.""How could you tell that was happening?"

• Channelling George Washington: Junking the Constitution

  by Thomas Fleming

  Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff."Mr. Madison, call your office!""I beg your pardon?"I’m only half kidding. As if we didn’t have enough trouble holding the country together, a law professor at university located in our national capital recently published an article in a major newspaper, entitled 'Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.'" "Why does he think we should do that?""He quotes Tom Jefferson, who believed every constitution should expire after a single generation. The professor doesn’t seem to realize he’s succumbing to Tom’s wackiest idea, 'The Earth Belongs to the Living.' Tom picked it up in France, along with his consuming love for French radicals who killed tens of thousands of innocent people to purify their revolution.""What else did 'The Earth Belongs to the Living' include?"